Beyond the Rabbit Hole: Mapping the Relational Harms of QAnon Radicalization

Abstract

Large-scale computational research on conspiracy theories has focused exclusively on believers'online behavior, leaving the harm experienced by those closest to them under-examined. This paper bridges this gap by analyzing 12747 stories from r/QAnonCasualties, an online support group for people who have ``lost''someone to conspiracy beliefs. We design a computational pipeline to extract fine-grained thematic traits from personal narratives and cluster them into six coherent radicalization personas, which we then link to the emotional toll reported by narrators via LLM-assisted emotion detection and regression modeling. We find that personas are meaningful predictors of specific emotional harms: radicalization perceived as a deliberate ideological choice is associated with anger and disgust, while personas marked by personal and cognitive collapse correspond to fear and sadness. This work provides an empirically grounded computational framework for understanding the relational harms of radicalization, opening new avenues for research into its wider social consequences.